12 votes

Developer Resume Review

I am currently a junior in college and in search of summer internship for next year. I am not seeing much response and starting to wonder if it is an issue with my resume. Is there any chance one of you would be willing to take a look at it? Open to any and all feedback.

Thank you for your time.

Resume

5 comments

  1. [2]
    spit-evil-olive-tips
    Link
    I think it's good overall, some minor suggestions: I generally despise "Objective" sections at the top of the resume, but one of the few times I think they're useful is for something like "looking...

    I think it's good overall, some minor suggestions:

    I generally despise "Objective" sections at the top of the resume, but one of the few times I think they're useful is for something like "looking for an internship in Summer 2021 and hopefully a full-time position starting in June 2022".

    Skills section - you could group "Linux: Ubuntu / Debian" in with the "Systems" line (you've done a good job keeping it to a single page, if you expand other sections as I think you should, you'll want to trim places like this to avoid a second page with only a few lines)

    Education - list your expected graduation date. Also your GPA unless it's low, and a list of the more interesting courses you took.

    Professional Experience - unless it's a very secretive startup you were working for, add some details about what the purpose of that REST API project was / what problem you were trying to solve. When I interview junior engineers this is one of the things I look for, an understanding of not just "here's a technical thing I did" but "here's a problem we had, and here's the technical thing and here's how that worked towards solving the overall problem".

    For example, ~15 years ago, I worked for my college's tech support helpdesk, and I wrote a Windows service in C# that ran on every computer in the computer labs. It had a front-end that used PHP and MySQL.

    Those are interesting technical details, but nothing about what the actual problem was. Compare that to:

    Our computer labs were often full, especially around midterms / finals, so students would have to go from lab to lab searching for an empty seat. I wrote a Windows service that ran on every lab computer, checked once a minute if someone was logged in and phoned home to a central server (sending only the hostname and a boolean, not the username or any other identifying data). The central server wrote those results to a MySQL database, then a PHP frontend queried the database and showed which labs had available seats. That frontend was displayed on TVs throughout campus and finding an open seat became much easier.

    And as a side bonus, we realized that could also use that internally to detect lab computers that were broken - if it stops reporting entirely it may be turned off or unplugged from the network. If it's reporting once a minute like normal, but no one has logged in to it in a long time, it might have a broken monitor/mouse/keyboard, or have lost its connection with the domain controller (annoyingly common) causing every login attempt to fail.

    Other experience: add some details about your undergrad research. Not everyone does research as an undergrad, so that's an opportunity for you to stand out, but it ends up being easy to miss because all the other experience entries have bullet points and this one doesn't.

    "2020 - Present" is confusing when it's still 2020, add the month you started or something. "Sophomore Year - 2019" is also confusing. Just list month & year start & end, like the Stanford entry. It makes it clear whether you worked on something an entire year or just a few months / one semester.

    "Twitter clone for final project" is a bit confusing when you haven't graduated yet. Was it a final project just for a class?

    For both the Twitter clone and FidoLease, you could collapse the first two bullet points (backend built using foo, frontend built using bar). Not necessary, but again useful if you find yourself just over a page and want to trim vertical space.

    Another thing to consider is that lots of companies are probably still evaluating what they want their internship programs to look like next year. 100% WFH has been hard enough on us full-time employees, I shudder at the thought of trying to onboard a cohort of summer interns under these conditions. So you may want to pursue non-traditional internships like Google Summer of Code or with companies like Gitlab that were 100% remote pre-covid and have a more established process for onboarding junior people remotely.

    7 votes
    1. unknown user
      Link Parent
      +1 for this. I did the MLH Fellowship this summer and it was a lifesaver for me.

      So you may want to pursue non-traditional internships like Google Summer of Code or with companies like Gitlab that were 100% remote pre-covid and have a more established process for onboarding junior people remotely.

      +1 for this. I did the MLH Fellowship this summer and it was a lifesaver for me.

      5 votes
  2. [2]
    unknown user
    (edited )
    Link
    I'd try to clarify the nature of "Undergraduate Research" (Is it a thesis? A course? Did you go out of your way to approach a professor for the opportunity?) Basically, it's unclear to me if this...
    • I'd try to clarify the nature of "Undergraduate Research" (Is it a thesis? A course? Did you go out of your way to approach a professor for the opportunity?) Basically, it's unclear to me if this is work experience (e.g. research assistantship) or coursework (something you simply signed up for).
    • I'd try and narrow down "Relevant Experience" -- the category feels too broad/unfocused, and requires the reader to spend some energy trying to parse what the items are. (Is this a project? Is this a club? Was this for a Hackathon-type event?) Not so good when your reader is only spending a bit of time per resume.
    • The items within Relevant Experience aren't formatted consistently. Sometimes the descriptions are in brackets in the title, sometimes they're in the subtitle... it makes it harder to quickly grok what something is.
    • Ditto for date consistency.
    • You're devoting a lot of space to simply listing the tools you've used. But... frankly, that isn't very useful information. As an undergrad, everyone gets exposed to a little bit of everything! An unfocused smattering of unrelated tech doesn't give me any clues as to whether you're worth hiring for <insert specific position>. It doesn't tell me anything about what sort of work you find interesting, it doesn't tell me anything about your personality or strengths or soft skills, and it doesn't tell me what sort of impact you've made in groups besides just showing up. (That's not to say don't list what you've worked with, but you can keep it to one bullet point per project. I use "Utilized: Django, React, DigitalOcean, PostgresSQL" per project and spend the rest of the time trying to signal more important qualities.)
    • Similarly, I don't think you need to group tools by type (Languages/frameworks/etc). You can just have a one-liner for "Skills" to save space. That big block doesn't really tell me enough to be worth all that space... it's a bit redundant with the project sections.
    • GPA?
    • "University project, 1st in over 50 submissions" -- This is a great start, but I don't have a great sense of the importance here. How were you graded? What was your role in the team? I'm left wanting more information about why this was an accomplishment for you specifically.
    • Maybe try and give your resume more focus depending on the role. The CV stuff is from a very different world than the fullstack stuff. Try to communicate why you're shooting for a specific role. What path are you trying to go down? The resume kind of gives off an "I tried a bunch of stuff and now I'm not really sure where to go from here" vibe, when I'd be looking for a "I tried a bunch of stuff, really liked <insert blank> for <insert reason>, and now I'm really curious and motivated towards a career in <blank>" vibe.

    tl;dr The resume basically tells me "I worked with this thing" over and over. That could be anyone! I want to know so much more about you and your personality and your experiences and your transferable skills! You can condense a lot and use the remaining space to tell a story that makes you stand out.

    6 votes
    1. [2]
      Comment deleted by author
      Link Parent
      1. unknown user
        (edited )
        Link Parent
        No problem! It takes a lot of time and iteration. After every revision you think, "aha! my resume looks so much better now! i can't believe it looked the way it used to, what was i thinking!" only...

        No problem! It takes a lot of time and iteration. After every revision you think, "aha! my resume looks so much better now! i can't believe it looked the way it used to, what was i thinking!" only to look at it again a few months later and say the exact same thing after more tweaking.

        It's very much a "you don't know what you don't know" sort of thing. It gets easier as you gain more nuggets of wisdom and experience... your perspective gradually shifts from student to employee, and you begin to better understand what people in your industry find valuable. Once you're able to get into the head of the person hiring you, it becomes a lot easier to communicate to them on their level. Know your audience, etc.

        2 votes
  3. Wulfsta
    (edited )
    Link
    I don't see anything strictly wrong, but you could consider including a list of courses you've taken, since coursework is relevant experience and would give a bit more about your background than...

    I don't see anything strictly wrong, but you could consider including a list of courses you've taken, since coursework is relevant experience and would give a bit more about your background than you currently appear to. Otherwise maybe fix the "Sophomore Year" date entry and rework the various bolded project names/descriptions into a more cohesive set of titles.

    Edit: Also be aware that it's a tough market right now, especially for internships.

    3 votes